The Department of Energy does not expect a delay to a crucial cesium-removal demonstration at the Hanford Site’s tank farms, despite the discovery last month that parts of the system might be prone to leaks, an agency spokesperson said this week.
The “leak-tightness” issue, as the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board (DNFSB) called it in a recent report, centers on some threaded connectors used in the Tank-Side Cesium Removal (TSCR) project, which showed wear and tear during an agency readiness review that wrapped up last month.
TSCR is designed to separate highly radioactive cesium and undissolved solids from liquid tank waste — left over by Cold War plutonium production — that could then be piped to the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant’s Low Activity Waste Facility to be solidified into glass cylinders suitable for eventual disposal in a deep-underground repository.
DOE still believes TSCR, which has become a crucial cog in the Direct Feed Low-Activity Waste program, will cost about $164 million to build and receive its authorization to begin operations, or critical decision-4, in July 2022, an agency spokesperson wrote in an email to Weapons Complex Monitor.
“DOE and tank operations contractor Washington River Protection Solutions are working together on a clear path forward to resolve all pre-start findings,” the DOE spokesperson said Tuesday. “Initial evaluations of the pre-start findings will not require significant design changes or schedule delays to resolve. The TSCR System is on schedule to begin treating tank waste early next year.”
Likewise, a spokesperson with the Washington Department of Ecology said in a Friday email the state agency is looking for DOE to work out any problems in the system.
“When any system is going through start up procedures, it’s inevitable that items may be identified that need further work,” the state spokesperson said. “It is our expectation that Energy and its contractors will work through these issues and develop a path forward that is protective of human health and the environment.”
In a regular update on Hanford, dated Oct. 15, the DNFSB said wrote that “effective controls have not been developed and implemented to ensure leak-tightness of Chemjoint™ and HART Union connections” and that “the DOE team believes” the issue is “significant,” and creates the “potential for design changes and/or schedule delays.”
As the Government Accountability Office reported last May, the TSCR project is one of the options being studied for removal of cesium before high-level radioactive waste is vitrified into a glass form at the Waste Treatment Plant being built by Bechtel. With construction of the Pretreatment Facility on hold, DOE has been looking at alternatives such as TSCR.
Subcontractor AVANTech was retained in July 2018 to install the modular TSCR facility on a 3,000-square-foot site near the AP Tank Farm at Hanford. The current TSCR setup is a demonstration for DOE to gauge how well the technique might work at Hanford. Additional Tank-Side Cesium Removal units could be ordered if the demonstration goes well.
Bechtel National is building the Waste Treatment Plant for DOE. The Amentum-led Washington River Protection Solutions is the tank farms contractor.
